Off to Tassie
Well picture posting is going to have to be postponed for another couple weeks as I'm off to Tasmania for 2 weeks. Greta, Tom and I are hiking the South Coast Track with 3 other mountaineering club members. We're taking a bush plane in, which is cool since I've never been on one! We've got 10 days to do the hike plus a few side trips, so plenty of time. My knee still hasn't healed fully yet so I'm a bit worried about that. But we've got a sat phone just in case! See you on the flip side....
Posted by Evan at 3:02 AM
Random Happenings during the first 2 weeks
Ok so I got lots of catching up to do with this blog thing so here we go....
I've been down under for 2 weeks now and been up to a bunch of stuff!
The first week here Greta, Tom and I went to a cricket match at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds...the must see shrine for all cricket players. It's a humungous 90,000 seat circular stadium dedicated to cricket and Aussie Rules Football (footy). We saw Victoria vs. Queensland in an nighttime 20-20 match. Like most Canadians I know (knew) nothing about cricket so harassed Greta and Tom with endless questions on how the game works. The rules are both straight forward and confusing. I think they're both interesting and silly, cause there are so many little quirks to them. But anyway, enough about that.
Me and Tom above. Greta below. It was "cold" so we had to wear a sweater.
The massive stadium. Victoria whooped the Banana Benenders.
The weekend was spent helping Greta and Laura move the appartment in Brunswick. It's sad for them to see it gone, because it's a really nice place in a very good location, but oh well.
We went over to their Nana's place for dinner one night. Nana loves her Oysters! But she was nice enough to let me try one, which reminded me that I don't like raw Oysters.
The hoon on Nana's electric scooter:
Playing dressup at Nana's place. Greta is ready for a ball. Sadly Nana didn't have many men's clothes though.
Buying dinner at Queen Victoria Market with Laura and Greta's mom Chris. I'm eating an Lamington mmm. The place is really busy and cool so I'll have to go back.
After cleaning out the Brunswick appartment we had to bring the furniture to their holiday house in Apollo Bay. It's a 3 hour drive so a long day trip.
Nev and Greta:
Holy cow there are real trees and hills in Australia!! After hours of flat barren country this was a welcome change!
Driving along the Great Ocean Road to Apollo Bay. It's really pretty. We went boggie boarding in the surf! The ocean is surprisingly COLD though, I think colder than Vancouver and a wetsuit is necessary.
Here we are now touring around Melbourne on another 30+ day.
The Yarra River and downtown Melbourne.
One of the main train stations in Melbourne (Flinder's Street Stn). I like trains, did I say that yet? Rumour has it the plans got switched and this station was destined for Bombay, so this is actually an Indian staion??
Sydney Road in Brunswick where Greta's family had the appartment. It's full of cosy cafe's and funky shops. Greta works in a cafe there so I walk this street often. Road trip to Sydney perhaps?!
One warm evening we went to the beach near Melbourne. It's in a large bay so no surf, but it's still really nice and good for a swim or two! With these hot days the beach was packed
Rosina:
Laura:
Guess who?
Posted by Evan at 1:55 AM
Australian Open 2007
The Aussie Open is going on right now for about 2 weeks. You can't escape the hype, it is all over the city and always on TV and showing in every bar! So Greta, her friend Rosina and I went to day 2 yesterday to get in on some of the action.
Tennis is big over here (well sports are in general). It's not like in Vancouver where stadiums are reused for different events and sports, Melbourne has a stadium for everything. So of course Tennis has it's own....and multiple stadiums! There is a whole park dedicated to tennis, with 2 large stadiums with retractable roofs, 2 smaller but decently sized outdoor courts, and a ton of small courts of various seating capacities, and even more practise courts! They really must like their tennis!
Here's an aerial of the grounds. It even extents off the picture to the left where you can just see the second large stadium. Insane!
Rosina, Greta and me watching a match in the sun. The stadium is empty cause it's too damn hot:
It's a good idea to go during the first few days of play because the big name players can be seen on the outside courts. We got a ground pass, which gets you into every match except for the main court where the tennis gods play.
We still saw some big names play though!...
David Nalbandian vs. Tipsarevic
Tomas Berdych vs. some Lee guy
Martina Hingis vs. Nathalie Dechy
James Blake vs. Carlos Maya
And some others I forget. Sharapova was playing in the center court, so we watched a bit on the big screen.
Nalbandian serving to Tiparevic:
The tempuratures were soaring, with a top of 40 Celcius!! (in Oz that's what you call the Maximum:p) It was painful just sitting watching the games, so I can't imagine how the players felt. They ended up evoking the "
Extreme Heat Policy" which means play is cancelled on all outdoor courts. This leaves the two stadiums left, which they close the roofs on and crank up the Aircon. We waited over 3 hours to get into the Vodafone arena to see Hingis and Blake play, but it was worth it!
The 'small' 10,000 seat Vodafone arena: (the main court one is 15,000 seats)
Hingus creaming a french girl:
Maya putting up a good but fruitless fight against Blake:
The Jumbotron where the poor people can watch the big stars:
Waiting for the tram to take us to the train station after a long, hot, awesome day watching 'the tennis' (in Oz you must address every sport with 'the'):
Posted by Evan at 11:34 PM
Picture Diary: Stopover in Fiji
Here's what Instead of writing heaps and heaps of boring passages on what I've been up to over here I'll post some pictures for your viewing/stalkig pleasure.
New Years Eve in the Vancouver Airport. I won't see a Timmy's for a while so got to get my last possible fix!
I arrived in Fiji at 5am January 2nd and was greeted island style by these guys serenating us weary travellers with some island music. It was cool.
I met an Aussie couple on the plane who despite returning from their honeymoon were nice enough to spend some time with me during the 34 hour journey. But it was their suggestion that we stand in the wrong line up for an hour where we got to listen to the guys above, so it was worth it (I guess).
I don't think anyone got any sleep on the 2 flights to Fiji so we were all knackered. The couple decided to get a hotel to sleep the day away. I on the other hand decided to tour Fiji on one hour of sleep! So I took a taxi into the town of Nadi and proceede to walk around and oogle at things.
They speak English in Fiji. Really.
By 7:30am it was alredy WAY TOO HOT and MUGGY out for my Canadianness, so I splurged on a budget half day tour. It was fun and got me out of the sun, but next time I'd rather not spend 4 hours in a van with some old folks (but they were Canadian and pretty cool).
Taken from the minibus. Sugar cane being transported on Fiji's cute miniature railway:
The first stop was a orchid garden and jungle walk where we saw some funky looking jungle plants. Check out this massive fern!
Postcard photo:
Next we went to an "authentic" Fijian village and saw how they live in clans with a chief and everything. All the little kids are cool and run up to you and say "bula" as a greeting then run off scared! Here's our village guide showing us this wooden drum thing they use to call village meetings:
Then we went to a fruit orchard and got to eat some really tasty tropical fruit with a view. To the right we could see the island where they filmed "Castaway".
There was a nice picture of me at a viewpoint looking over the island, but since I spilt Papaya all over my white shirt it's not going to be posted. (FYI papaya juice stains!)
And what's a trip without a good 'ol rip off. Here I got suckered into going into this guys shop where he was super nice and offered me a "gift" as a token for next time when I return. Then he asked me for a small "donation" to help him pay for his "bread 'n butter" cause he is a "poor man". Bastard. Well I felt bad cause he already engraved my name on this supposed "Fijian Boomerang" pos thing so I gave him a few bucks. Another guy tried to get me on the same thing later in the day too, so it's apparently a popular method.
The rest of the day was spent in an internet cafe to escape the extreme heat and then chewing the fat with a guy from Kamloops who also got ripped off in Nadi, and worse than me. He had a good laugh at the sticks crap and took the picture for me just before we chucked them in the trash.
I must admit I know absolutely nothing about Fiji before going there. It is a lot poorer than I thought and people seem to make almost nothing yet the prices are on par with Canada/US/western world. Talking to a few people it seems like the millions of dollars go to only the people lucky enough to own land with a resort, whereas the majority sees to benefit from tourism. Also, the people are extremely friendly there and come up and talk to you lots, especially in the early morning before the tourists are out. The exception is the touts in the tourist parts, and the asshole scammers who try to get you to drink this dopy drink called kava and supposedly rip you off. But that's just my view of the place.
Time to get back on the plane to Melbourne!...
Posted by Evan at 1:17 AM
Oz: The beginning
If you're reading this you're probably aware that I've been down in Australia for almost 2 weeks now! So I guess it's time to get the travel blog rolling again and post some crazy stories. Well unfortunately nothing exceptionally notable has happened yet, but I'm working on it.
So to start the first update I'll start from the beginning!...
I left rainy Vancouver at 6pm on New Years Eve bound for Melbourne. Midnight on the plane was rather disappointing....nobody made any noise! And I even brought a noise maker in anticipation but I couldn't bring myself to blowing it whilst everyone slept. We arrived in Honolulu at 1am, but due to the time change we got a second crack at new years 2006. Thankfully this time as we were re-boarding the plane some of us let a few cheers slip out! And to get the complaints out of the way, I flew Air Pacific and wouldn't recommend it...they don't have movies on demand and only have one screen at the front of the plane:(
Arriving in Fiji at 5am local time I proceeded to waste the day walking around. But by 7:30am it was way too hot for me and the winter westerner mode by body was in so I took a half day driving tour of some sights, which was fun enough. Pics to follow...
Finally after 34 hours of travelling I arrived in Melbourne at 11pm on January 2nd, missing New Years Day altogether. Greta was waiting for me beautifully at the gate, and even brought balloons! It was so nice to see her again after a short break apart!
Day 2 (Jan 3rd), my first real day in Melbourne, was spent lazing around while Greta was at work. I met Laura in the afternoon and she took me for a quick tour around the Brunswick part of town, but the 36C heat was too much so I retreated inside for a movie and a nap.
The rest of the went Greta and I just toured around the city and also saw an evening Cricket match with Tom at the MCG. Victoria creamed Queensland! The weekend was spent helping Greta and her parents move the Brunswick appartment since they are selling it. Then Tuesday we went down to their holliday house for the day. But since I'm out of time at the internet cafe I'll save you all the boring details and get some pictures posted someday soon!....
Posted by Evan at 1:14 AM
